Hello

Hi Everyone, Nice to meet you all. I have 11 acres (predominantly for horses) but also have a small flock (20) of Romney ewes and Valais Blacknose Ram. Am excited to have found this resourse!

Welcome and, just out of curiosity, how did you find this amazing resourceful website?
We will need photos of your ram ....... of course.

I was actually looking for "tips approaching lambing"......this is only our second season (first with my valais) and last year was a blimmin disaster although my "real" farming friends assure me that it was awful for most on our region. This year I have taken steps to provide shelter, dry lambing areas and am looking to restrict feed available to the ewes carrying singles to try to avoid huge lambs again.....sigh!
Anyway so happy to have found you all!

Hello and welcome!
i second Spoook, we do need a pic of your ram;)
Being Swiss, i have followed the 'arrival' and subsequent excitement over this photogenic breed with some bemusement.

Here : www.prospecierara.ch/de/tiere you can find some more of the old sheep breeds in Switzerland - some dating back nearly to the bronze age...

Hello! I have just tried to post a pic but am struggling....it was taken 2 weeks after shearing so he does not have a full fleece on but he is a lovely boy, enjoys being petted and it quite chilled out! I am just learning all this stuff but like so many feel in love with this gorgeous breed of sheep....thank for the link, will definitely have a read later on with a cuppa.

Hi and welcome. We have been lambing since 1992 and have always had a disaster for one reason or another.
with big singles, I've come to the conclusion that if the genes of either the ram or the ewe are for big lambs, then we get big lambs even if we don't feed those with singles much .
Have you scanned to know which are carrying singles? That is a huge help but not foolproof because if one of the twins is attached much better than the other at the placenta then we end up with one huge lamb and one small lamb. Ditto if one of the lambs dies in-utero.
Have you changed the ram that you used last year? If so that might help.
Did you record which ewes made big singles last year? And if you did scan, how many of them have singles this year. They are the ones that you will need the lambing kit for ..
And ... the only stupid question is the one that you should have asked but didn't .

Thank you for you response ....., I am wanting to scan and on another post on here have asked when is the best time during the ewes pregnancy to do this..... would you perhaps know? I have changed the ram this year. Last year I had a poll Dorset and also a Suffolk ( don’t ask how that happened lol!) and this year I purchased my own Valais Blacknose..... also last year my ewes were all first time lambert so am hoping experience will help them this year ( as well as me )

Most likely, your photos are too big. Try resizing them to a smaller version and try posting again

Hi....it's not the size of your image, we're having intermittent problems with jpeg and jpg files. If you can save them as png files and attach them they should show up properly. Apologies :oops: :oops: